Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
Diet has a profound direct and indirect effect on reproductive success in both sexes. Variation in diet quality and quantity can significantly alter the capacity of females to lay eggs and of males to deliver courtship. Here, we tested the effect of dietary resource limitation on the ability of male...
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John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5082519/ |
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pubmed-50825192016-11-09 Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster Mason, J. S. Rostant, W. G. Chapman, T. Research Papers Diet has a profound direct and indirect effect on reproductive success in both sexes. Variation in diet quality and quantity can significantly alter the capacity of females to lay eggs and of males to deliver courtship. Here, we tested the effect of dietary resource limitation on the ability of male Drosophila melanogaster to respond adaptively to rivals by extending their mating duration. Previous work carried out under ad libitum diet conditions showed that males exposed to rivals prior to mating significantly extend mating duration, transfer more ejaculate proteins and achieve higher reproductive success. Such adaptive responses are predicted to occur because male ejaculate production may be limited. Hence, ejaculate resources require allocation across different reproductive bouts, to balance current vs. future reproductive success. However, when males suffer dietary limitation, and potentially have fewer reproductive resources to apportion, we expect adaptive allocation of responses to rivals to be minimized. We tested this prediction and found that males held on agar‐only diets for 5–7 days lost the ability to extend mating following exposure to rivals. Interestingly, extended mating was retained in males held on low yeast/sugar: no sugar/yeast diet treatments, but was mostly lost when males were maintained on ‘imbalanced’ diets in which there was high yeast: no sugar and vice versa. Overall, the results show that males exhibit adaptive responses to rivals according to the degree of dietary resource limitation and to the ratio of individual diet components. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016-07-15 2016-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5082519/ /pubmed/27338014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12924 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Mason, J. S. Rostant, W. G. Chapman, T. |
| spellingShingle |
Mason, J. S. Rostant, W. G. Chapman, T. Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster |
| author_facet |
Mason, J. S. Rostant, W. G. Chapman, T. |
| author_sort |
Mason, J. S. |
| title |
Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
|
| title_short |
Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
|
| title_full |
Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
|
| title_fullStr |
Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
|
| title_full_unstemmed |
Resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
|
| title_sort |
resource limitation and responses to rivals in males of the fruit fly drosophila melanogaster |
| description |
Diet has a profound direct and indirect effect on reproductive success in both sexes. Variation in diet quality and quantity can significantly alter the capacity of females to lay eggs and of males to deliver courtship. Here, we tested the effect of dietary resource limitation on the ability of male Drosophila melanogaster to respond adaptively to rivals by extending their mating duration. Previous work carried out under ad libitum diet conditions showed that males exposed to rivals prior to mating significantly extend mating duration, transfer more ejaculate proteins and achieve higher reproductive success. Such adaptive responses are predicted to occur because male ejaculate production may be limited. Hence, ejaculate resources require allocation across different reproductive bouts, to balance current vs. future reproductive success. However, when males suffer dietary limitation, and potentially have fewer reproductive resources to apportion, we expect adaptive allocation of responses to rivals to be minimized. We tested this prediction and found that males held on agar‐only diets for 5–7 days lost the ability to extend mating following exposure to rivals. Interestingly, extended mating was retained in males held on low yeast/sugar: no sugar/yeast diet treatments, but was mostly lost when males were maintained on ‘imbalanced’ diets in which there was high yeast: no sugar and vice versa. Overall, the results show that males exhibit adaptive responses to rivals according to the degree of dietary resource limitation and to the ratio of individual diet components. |
| publisher |
John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5082519/ |
| _version_ |
1613700387132407808 |